President-elect Donald Trump named former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani as an informal adviser on cybersecurity, according to the presidential transition office.
Giuliani, who heads the cybersecurity consulting firm Giuliani Partners, will serve as an adviser on finding solutions to cyber incursions in the private sector and to advise the government on possible responses.
Giuliani, an early Trump supporter, was a top candidate for secretary of state in the Trump administration but was passed over for former ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson.
“This is a rapidly evolving field both as to intrusions and solutions and it is critically important to get timely information from all sources,” the transition said in a statement. “Mr. Giuliani was asked to initiate this process because of his long and very successful government career in law enforcement and his now sixteen years of work providing security solutions in the private sector.”
According to the transition, Trump will solicit “anecdotal information” from private sector executives on the challenges and solutions to cybersecurity challenges.
“The attendees may or may not change from session to session, but the specific agenda subjects will likely change because of the rapidly evolving field of cyber security, and frequent developments, both positive and negative,” the transition added.
The participants will not necessarily be expected to produce a report on their findings or come to a consensus on the issues.
Trump is also likely to host meetings with business executives on hacking, data theft and information security, according to the transition.
Cybersecurity was a topic at Trump’s news conference on Wednesday, with the president-elect acknowledging for the first time that Russia was responsible for hacking the Democratic National Committee during the presidential election campaign last year. Trump said that he had asked intelligence officials to do a “major report” on hacking within 90 days.
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